Page 78 - S/ Fall 2022

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Sweater by Valentino.
“I’m surprisingly sensitive for all the black clothes I wear,” says Natasha Lyonne. The star is calling from a late-night
commute back to Upstate New York, where she is filming her forthcoming project, Poker Face.
It’s nearly 10 o’clock at night, but she’s full of the piss and vinegar one would expect from such a veteran of eccentricity. And though I’ve never met Lyonne in person, her raspy smoker’s voice comes through the line like an old friend—soothing in its familiarity, even when she’s gone off on a tangent about the area’s roadkill problem. “They’re known for their prisons and Lyme disease,” she says flatly. “I know a lot of people love it, so I am questioning my friends who live up there. I don’t know what’s wrong with them!”
Despite her proclivity for staying within the city’s bounds, the 43-year- old native New Yorker has been doing the bridges and tunnels a lot lately. It’s all for good reason, though—she describes her role in Poker Face as one she’s always wanted to play. The 10-episode mystery series is set to arrive on Peacock in 2023, and though details on the project are few and far between, it’s already stacked with a stellar cast that includes Adrien Brody, Ellen Barkin, Judith Light, and frequent Lyonne collaborator Chloë Sevigny. Poker Face is the first television effort from Rian Johnson, the writer–director behind mega-success Knives Out, so it’s easy to understand her enthusiasm. Lyonne also serves as executive producer on the series via Animal Pictures,
a production company she founded alongside Maya Rudolph. “My deep hope is that we get to be really bold with making it, and that I become Angela Lansbury or something,” she says.
Poker Face is just the latest in a long list of achievements for Lyonne, who began acting at the age of six with a stint on the ’80s-tastic Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but lately her career seems to be in rapid acceleration mode. The show Russian Doll—which she co-created, stars in, executive produces, and sometimes directs—received widespread critical acclaim, earning 14 Emmy nominations and three wins for its psychedelic yet poignant take on the human condition. In Russian Doll, Lyonne plays Nadia, a woman who is caught in a time loop—at her 36th birthday in season one, and then two days away from her 40th birthday in season two. Season two, which premiered on Netflix in April, sees Nadia travelling on a liminal 6 Train that goes back to 1982 New York City, where she soon discovers that she is trapped inside the body of her mother, played by Sevigny. By travelling even further back in time to Second World War–era Germany, Nadia tries to change the course of her family’s history, encountering mystery and generational trauma along the way. “Russian Doll is a lot to hold on your
SMAGAZINEOFFICIAL.COM NATASHA LYONNE